It is known to use one or more medical imaging techniques to obtain radiological data relating to a patient or other subject, and to process the medical imaging data to obtain medical images.
Many radiological workflows may depend on oblique reformats. An oblique reformat may comprise a multi-planar reformat of volumetric imaging data that is performed for a selected plane that is not one of the principal anatomical planes (which may comprise coronal, sagittal and axial planes). An oblique reformat may be obtained by resampling at least part of the volumetric imaging data set onto the selected plane.
An oblique reformat may comprise a two-dimensional image displayed as if viewed from a given angle. An oblique reformat may be oriented to show clinically significant anatomy in a standard perspective. An oblique reformat may comprise a series of images. The images may be parallel to each other. The images may be orthogonal to a principal axis of view. The principal axis of view may be a line between an observer and the anatomy of interest.
Oblique reformats may be used, for example, in musculoskeletal (MSK) studies of joints in the shoulder, pelvis and knee. The focus in some such studies may be the position of one bone in a cavity, as viewed from a very specific angle.
Oblique reformat views (for example, of joints) may be time consuming and/or difficult to construct manually. Oblique reformat views may also be difficult to construct automatically. Oblique reformat views may often be at least partially determined by the tangent to a smooth, curved surface. In some circumstances, such a tangent may be difficult to compute automatically.
Oblique reformat views may often be variable between patients. For example, different patients may need to be viewed from different angles in order to ensure that the orientation of specific anatomical structures best supports diagnosis. Different patients may have variability in their anatomy that may lead to different views being used.
Furthermore, different clinicians may have different viewing preferences. For example, different clinicians may wish to view a patient's anatomy from slightly different angles.